


Eavesdown

by fireflysglow_archivist



Category: Firefly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-01-28
Updated: 2003-01-28
Packaged: 2019-04-29 12:12:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14472498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fireflysglow_archivist/pseuds/fireflysglow_archivist
Summary: How Simon found "Serenity."





	Eavesdown

**Author's Note:**

> Note from alice ttlg, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Firefly’s Glow](https://fanlore.org/wiki/Firefly%27s_Glow), and was moved to the AO3 as part of the Open Doors project in 2018. I tried to reach out to all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are the creator and would like to claim this work, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Firefly's Glow collection profile](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/fireflysglow/profile).

 

Eavesdown

## Eavesdown

### by Shanna

Disclaimer: I'm making no profit from this. The characters and situations belong to Joss and his minions. This story is in response to the Chinese phrasebook challenge at Television Without Pity. 

* * *

Simon Tam stepped off the passenger transport at the Eavesdown Docks on Persephone and immediately wished he could turn around and go right back on board the ship. The miasma that assaulted him -- and there really was no better word than "assaulted" -- was almost overpowering, a combination of sweat, unwashed human flesh, exotic cooking odors, various bodily fluids, dirt and decay. The sounds were even worse, a cacophony of voices, engines and God knew what else. 

But his journey had very little to do with his personal comfort, so he got a better grip on his bags and forced himself to merge into the crowds. It was twilight, and he was grateful for what light remained. This wasn't a place he wanted to be after dark. In the distance, he could see the sunset reflecting on the shining towers of the more prosperous part of the city. That was where he would be more comfortable, where he should have belonged, but not anymore. 

His underground contact had told him to book a room at a hotel in the Eavesdown district, where he'd get a message telling him where and when to retrieve his cargo. It would be a place that took cash and didn't take names. He wasn't optimistic about the quality he'd find at a place like that. He'd certainly done his fair share of traveling -- on family vacations, going along with his father on business trips when he was a kid, attending various medical conferences -- but he'd never traveled like this before, anonymously and always looking over his shoulder, staying at the worst possible places rather than the best. 

"My, aren't you a pretty one!" a voice catcalled from nearby. He chanced a glance to see what had to be a prostitute. He wasn't surprised. They tended to congregate near docks on all worlds, whether in the Core or on the Rim. He'd treated more than a few in the emergency room when they'd been robbed or assaulted. 

"Hey, handsome, lookin' for a friend?" 

"Well, hello there, pretty baby. Let Mama teach you a thing or two." 

"Hi, good-looking, want a ride?" 

His cheeks burning, he kept his eyes focused straight ahead, doing his best to ignore the voices coming at him. He'd always thought it was bad form for people blessed with advantages to complain about those advantages, but he sometimes secretly resented his looks. People had to really get to know him and know what he could do before they took him seriously as more than just a pretty face. With his other advantages, such as wealth, a good name and a prestigious position, taken into consideration, he often wondered if anybody ever bothered to find out who he really was, especially the women his parents made a point of introducing to him at dinner parties and balls. They saw a good-looking, wealthy doctor from a good family, and that was all they really cared about. 

That was a possible bright side to his current circumstances. He was no longer wealthy, his good name was sullied with the outlaw stamp, he no longer had a job and his family had disowned him. So now he was a handsome, outlawed, homeless, unemployed doctor. What a catch! 

He narrowly side-stepped the bloody conclusion to a knife fight and resisted the urge to stop and render aid. That would only draw attention to himself, and the last thing he needed was to have the authorities question the fighters and ask if they could identify the doctor who treated them. 

_I can't do this,_ he despaired for what had to be the millionth time in his journey. He wasn't cut out for this kind of life. He was entirely unprepared. He was doomed to fail, and when he failed, he was dooming his sister, as well. 

But if he didn't do anything, she was just as doomed, and he wouldn't have been able to live with himself if he'd done nothing. To calm himself, he resorted to a familiar exercise. *Problem: A patient arrives in the ER. He's fallen from a scaffold on a tall building and has multiple fractures and internal injuries. What do you do?* His mental checklist of tests and procedures kept him occupied until he reached the hotel the underground had sent him to, and he'd just finished saving his imaginary patient's life as he reached the front desk. 

It was probably a good thing that he'd been too preoccupied to notice the exterior of the hotel, judging from the condition of the lobby. He probably would have turned and run. He didn't think anyone had cleaned the place since it was built. A cloud of dust rose from the carpet at each footstep, and the few pieces of furniture looked like they'd been used for target practice. 

He set down his bags and hit the bell on the front desk, then waited for the clerk to appear. It took several minutes before a woman of indeterminate age stepped forward. She looked like she'd been weathered and worn since childhood, and her hair was so dirty it was impossible to tell the color. Somehow, he doubted he could expect clean sheets. He opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out. He cleared his throat and tried again. "I-I'd like a room for the night. Please." 

She named a price that seemed high considering the surroundings, but he didn't feel he had much option other than to pay it. He took the cash from the breast pocket of his coat and handed it over. The woman handed him a key that hung from a heavy wooden plank with the number twelve carved into it. He thanked her and bent to pick up his bags, but froze when she said, "You wouldn't be Mr. Jones, would you? Simon Jones?" 

That was the alias the underground had printed on the fake identification documents they'd given him. He'd been skeptical about their choice of alias. The last name practically screamed fake, and using his real first name didn't seem like an alias at all. They'd reassured him that it was safer. It decreased the risk that he'd forget to answer to his new name or, worse, answer to his real name when he wasn't supposed to. It was best to keep things simple, they'd said. In other words, they knew they were dealing with an amateur. 

He cleared his throat again. "Yes, yes, that would be me." 

"Message for you." She handed him a grubby envelope, which he tucked into his coat pocket. Then he picked up his bags and headed for the stairs. Room number twelve was at the top of the stairs on the left side of the hallway. It took a couple of tries and both hands before he was able to get the door unlocked, then he had to try to prop the door open with his foot while he moved all of his bags inside. 

He very quickly noticed he wasn't alone in the room. Somebody was already in the bed. "Oh, excuse me, they must have given me the wrong room," he said, but the person in the bed didn't respond. 

He edged closer, then took a quick step back as the smell hit him. He was pretty sure the person was dead. He'd seen enough dead bodies to recognize the look and the smell. Just in case, though, he moved forward again to check the pulse. As he expected, there wasn't one. Dead people didn't particularly bother him. He'd dissected a few during his training, and he'd even brought a couple of briefly dead people back to life. This fellow, however, appeared to be beyond his help. From the looks of him, he'd been dead a couple of days. Simon wasn't encouraged by what this said about the quality of the housekeeping at this hotel. 

As comfortable as he might be around the dead, he didn't want to share a hotel room with them. Clutching his key, he stepped into the hallway and spotted a maid with her service cart. What, exactly, was one supposed to say when complaining about a corpse in one's hotel room? He could barely form a coherent thought at the moment, let alone a meaningful sentence. 

"Chuang2shang4 you3 shi1ti3, qing3 huan4 yi2xia4 chuang2dan1!" he shouted at the maid, then mentally kicked himself. What kind of idiot would bother to request clean sheets when he'd found a corpse in his hotel bed? The sheets were the least of his concerns. 

The maid looked dubious, but when he opened the door and showed her inside, her eyes only widened a little bit. He wondered just how often they found corpses in the beds in this place. "Perhaps a different room for you?" she asked. "I'll go get a key." He handed over his wooden number twelve plank, then stood in the doorway of the room to wait for her to get back. He heard raised voices coming from the lobby, but he couldn't follow the words. A few minutes later, the maid returned with another wooden plank. "Now you're in eleven, okay?" 

She held the door to room number twelve propped open for him while he transferred his bags across the hall into the new room. "Sorry for the inconvenience," she said. She hesitated for a moment, as if waiting for a tip, but he'd be damned if he'd tip someone after being forced to switch rooms due to a dead body in the bed. She finally gave up and went away, and he shut the door, made sure it was locked, turned the interior deadbolt, connected the chain, then dragged the room's one rickety chair to wedge under the doorknob. He wasn't taking any chances in this place. There was no telling how the dead man had ended up that way. 

Now that he was more or less safe, for the time being, a delayed reaction shock set in and he had to sit on the edge of the bed because his legs were shaking so badly that they threatened to stop supporting him. Then he had to clasp his hands together to keep them from shaking. He was not cut out for this kind of work or this kind of life. "Why me, River?" he whispered. 

He could almost see her in front of him, with that look of exaggerated patience she got when she was dealing with someone who wasn't nearly as bright as she was. "Who else, Simon?" she asked. 

She had a point. True, their father probably could have put a stop to all of this with the right word to the right people. Gabriel Tam was influential enough that the government wouldn't have stonewalled him if he'd made any kind of protest. But he wouldn't have seen the code in the letters if they'd been sent to him. Hell, he'd even refused to see the code when Simon had broken it and shown it to him, highlighted and annotated. Who else, indeed. 

The problem was, he felt doomed to failure. He was a surgeon, not a spy, resistance fighter or even a very good liar. Unfortunately, River wouldn't see it that way. For whatever reason that he'd never been able to fathom, she'd always idolized her big brother. Even when she was correcting his spelling and critiquing his homework, she acted like she thought he was infallible. As an infant, she stopped crying when he picked her up. She'd taken her first steps to come to him. Her first word had been his name -- his real name and not some baby-talk nickname. 

He had a feeling, though, that some of her hero worship might have faded by now. It had been years since she had sent the first coded message. By now, she'd probably given up hope that he could do anything to help her. He hoped she knew that he would have tried his best, even if he ultimately failed. 

With a burst of nervous energy, he got off the bed and began pacing the room. This was crazy. He was crazy. Maybe they'd all been right about him -- his parents, his friends, his colleagues. He could hear the chatter in the hospital corridors: 

"Hey, did you hear about Tam? He finally snapped." 

"We all saw that coming. He was going off the deep end. It was only a matter of time." 

"Poor kid, the stress was too much for him." 

That was the only conclusion they could come to, given the fact that he'd disappeared into thin air after acting weird for years. He'd been erratic and twitchy. He'd gone from good citizen to being far too familiar with blackout zones, the seedier parts of town and the interior of police stations. 

Just thinking about it made him start shaking again. *Problem: There's been a mid-air flyer collision. Multiple wounded, all arriving simultaneously. Triage, then treatment. What do you do?* 

He was halfway through mentally evaluating the accident victims when he had to laugh out loud. They must have been right about him. After all, he was having conversations with his absent sister and treating imaginary patients in his head. He'd given up the job he'd trained most of his life for, alienated his family, given most of his money to a shadowy organization he knew next to nothing about and set off to the edge of the system on nothing more than a promise from people he didn't entirely trust. He was stark raving out of his mind. He should just get up in the morning, find the first transport back to Osiris and check himself into a mental facility for evaluation. 

Only, he knew that's not the way it would go. Even if he made it to that mental facility, he knew he'd never be allowed to leave. At one of the stops along the way he'd checked his bank account and found it frozen. He'd barely got away from the terminal before police converged on it. They knew why he'd left and what he was doing, and were trying to make it as difficult as possible. They wouldn't take such measures for a young doctor who'd buckled under stress and was suffering from delusions. As the old saying went, you weren't paranoid if they really were out to get you. 

He belatedly remembered the note the desk clerk had given him. He sat back on the bed and pulled the envelope out of his pocket, then opened it with trembling fingers. All it said was, "Your cargo will be ready after noon tomorrow, Eavesdown cargo storage, bay 7." He felt faint. This was proof. It was for real. He wasn't crazy. Well, maybe a little bit, but he wasn't suffering from delusions. Still clutching the note, he bent over and put his head between his knees until the room stopped spinning. With a deep breath, he straightened up and checked the clock on the nightstand. It was still early evening, far too many hours until he would be reunited with his sister, or rather with her cryosleep chamber. 

He wasn't hungry, but he forced himself to nibble on a ration bar, just to keep his strength up and prevent another fainting spell. From this point on, personal weakness was something he couldn't allow himself. He had to protect his sister at all costs. Period. 

The noise from the street below showed no signs of fading, but he knew he had to at least pretend to rest. He undressed and put on his pajama pants, then hung up his suit and brushed it carefully. He wouldn't be buying new clothes anytime soon, so the clothes he had would have to last a while. He pulled back the covers on the bed, and after taking a good, long look at the condition of the sheets, he pulled on his old red sweater and a pair of socks, then slipped an undershirt over his pillow. He thought about putting on surgical gloves because he really didn't want to touch those sheets with his bare skin, but that might be overkill. He was going to have to get used to less-than-ideal conditions. This was very likely the way the rest of his life would be. That was a depressing thought. 

As tired as he was, he couldn't relax enough to get to sleep. He jumped at every sound, sure that it would be federal agents coming to arrest him. Come to think of it, even if they knew where he was, they probably wouldn't make their move until he was in possession of the cryosleep chamber. Otherwise, there wasn't much of a case against him, and their real objective was getting River back. They'd wait until he led them to her, which meant he was safe for the night. 

Strangely enough, he found that almost reassuring. Reassuring enough, at least, to allow him to get to sleep. 

He woke the next morning to light streaming into his room and even more noise from the street below than there had been the night before, something he hadn't thought possible. After washing, shaving and dressing he forced himself to eat another ration bar. It was a godawful substitute for food, but it was better than having to leave the room before he absolutely had to, and he wasn't even sure he could find anything better nearby. 

He'd taken his time at doing all of these tasks, and he still had a couple of hours to go. He didn't have to check out of the hotel until noon, and he didn't intend to leave until the last possible second. He occupied himself by unpacking and repacking his bags, making sure everything was in order. It was difficult to get his mind around the fact that these bags held everything he owned. Everything he and his sister owned, he corrected himself. One bag held the few items of River's he'd been able to grab from her room before his father had thrown him out of the house for good. He had no idea if she'd grown since she'd been off at school, so he'd selected things that were long and loose and should fit her no matter what. He'd also brought her favorite childhood doll. She'd need something other than him that was familiar. 

Finally, it was time to go. He gathered his bags, picked up his key and headed down to the lobby. He dropped the key off at the front desk, then steeled himself to face the chaos of the Eavesdown streets. They weren't as frightening as they'd been in the encroaching darkness, but they were still noisy, busy and smelly. He'd familiarized himself with a map of Eavesdown on his encyclopedia during his long journey to Persephone, so he knew exactly where to go to get to the cargo storage facility. 

There was one man on duty at the front desk. He looked like he hadn't bathed in weeks, and his clothes had probably never been washed. The man wore a t-shirt that once might have been white but which now was discolored beyond repair. It didn't quite fit him, leaving a sizable gap above his waistline through which a flabby belly protruded. The man scratched his bare belly as he said, "Somethin' I can help you with, son?" 

"I have cargo stored in bay seven," Simon said. 

"Oh yeah, just came in an hour or so ago. Fellow said you'd be comin' for it. Where you want us to deliver it?" 

Simon froze. He hadn't really considered that yet. "Deliver it?" 

"Well, I'm just assumin' you want it put on another ship, otherwise you'd have just had it shipped to wherever you wanted it 'round 'bout these parts, right?" 

"Oh. Right. Well, I-I haven't secured transport yet. I just wanted to check on my cargo first." He wanted to see it for himself. He wouldn't know until well after he reached Boros what was really inside, but he'd feel a lot better if he could verify that it really was a cryosleep chamber and that it was functioning properly. 

The man leveraged himself out of his chair with much grunting, then took a key ring off a hook on the wall and said, "Right this way, son." Simon followed him past a series of wire cages. The man came to a stop and unlocked one of the cages. "There you go. That what you were expectin' to see?" 

Simon held his breath as he stepped forward and let his bags fall to the ground at his feet. It was as best as he could tell a real cryosleep chamber. He checked the readings, and they were all satisfactory. Resting one hand on top of the box, he thought, _I'm here, mei-mei. We'll soon be safe._

He turned back to the attendant and said. "I'll need to go line up transportation. May I leave my bags here?" 

"Sure can. But we won't transport them to your ship. Union rules." 

"Right. Okay. I-I'll be back soon." 

Now he had to brave the docks area again. It was much less intimidating in daylight, but it still wasn't pleasant. At least he had a destination planned. Based on his own research and what the underground had told him, Boros would be the best place to wait until River came out of cryosleep. They'd probably have to move on from there soon enough, but it would do for now. 

He walked down the row of ships, reading the signs displaying their destinations and departure times. He'd only found one heading for Boros, but it was leaving in two days, and he didn't want to stay here that long. If the signs were depressing, the ships were even more so. Most of them he wouldn't trust to shelter him from a rainy day, let alone safely convey him and his sister through the vast emptiness of space. He shuddered at the thought of all that nothingness. 

Finally, he reached another sign advertising a departure to Boros. They were set to leave at 1500, which was plenty soon enough for him. While he was still studying the sign, a cheerful voice called out, "Hi there!" He looked up to see a girl sitting in a lawn chair, twirling a flowered umbrella behind her. She was extraordinarily pretty, mostly because of the sunny smile that lit her face. Her features were fine enough, but he felt like most of her prettiness came from within. She was joy in human form. "Lookin' for a ride?" she asked. 

He hesitated. Before last night, he never would have considered that she might mean anything other than transportation, but after those prostitutes he'd passed, he couldn't be sure what she was asking. No matter how he answered, he risked making a fool of himself. If he took her at face value and that wasn't what she meant, he'd look hopelessly naive. If he took it as a different kind of invitation, he'd only insult her. He settled for asking a question of his own. "Is this your ship?" 

"Yeah. Well, not technically. Captain Reynolds owns her. But I look after her. I'm the chief engineer. Actually, the only engineer, and that's just a fancy way of saying I'm the mechanic. Her name's Serenity. Ain't she a beauty?" 

He looked up at the ship looming over them. "Beauty" wasn't exactly the word he'd use to describe it. From what he could see, it was old, battered and rusted. He tried to think of something nice to say. He was a terrible liar, but he didn't want to hurt the girl with his true opinion. 

"I know she don't look like much," she said, so much closer to him that he jumped in surprise when she spoke. While he was looking up at the ship, she'd come over to stand next to him. "But ships are kind of like people. It's not the way they look, it's what's inside that counts. Now, that don't mean that pretty ships -- or pretty people --" she gave him a look that made him blush "-- are always bad. It's just that's not the most important thing. When it comes to a ship, the outside don't matter at all, so long as it keeps the air in, right? What really matters in a ship is the engines. They make all the difference between a good ride and a bad one. Serenity here runs real smooth and quiet-like. With other ships, that ain't always the case. See that one over there?" He turned to see that she was pointing at a nearby ship with a gleaming, polished hull. "She's as shiny as all get-out, but when she runs, it's like this." She made roaring and sputtering noises and her whole body shook in what Simon presumed was meant to be an imitation of an engine. The display was so ludicrous, yet so delightfully uninhibited, that he couldn't help but smile. It almost hurt his face, it had been so long since he'd had a reason for a genuine smile. 

She stopped her engine imitation and her smile grew even bigger. "So, you can smile, after all." Reaching up, she tapped his cheek lightly with one finger. "And you have a very nice smile. You should do that more often." Now he knew he was turning ten shades of red. He didn't think he'd ever been flirted with quite this boldly. Back home, the women would never lay their cards on the table like that. Now that he thought about it, it was probably just a sales technique, anyway. Who could resist a pretty girl who had a knack for making a man feel special? 

She didn't seem to notice his discomfort, for she went right on talking. "I'm Kaylee, by the way," she said, grabbing his hand and shaking it. She had a firm grip, and he could feel the roughness of calluses and a few healed cuts on her hands. 

"It's very nice to meet you, Kaylee," he said formally, instinctively falling back on a lifetime of habit. Even as he shook her hand, his attention wandered back to her ship. It didn't look like a passenger transport. More like a smuggling vessel. It had a generally disreputable appearance.. A loud "Ahem" shook him out of his thoughts. He forced his attention back to Kaylee. 

"You know, it is customary in most places to introduce yourself when someone introduces herself to you," she said sternly, but her eyes were laughing. 

"Oh. Oh, I-I'm sorry. I'm Simon." 

She squeezed his hand. "It's very nice to meet you, Simon." She didn't let go of his hand. He waited for her to ask his last name, but she didn't. Then again, she hadn't given him hers. "So, Simon, are you coming with us?" 

"I have some cargo. Do you have space for that?" 

She laughed and ran her thumb across the back of his knuckles. "We're mostly cargo space. We just take passengers from time to time. But we have real nice passenger quarters, anyway. What kind of cargo is it?" 

He stiffened instinctively, but it was a natural question. "It's not large, just some medical equipment. I'm a doctor." That was the truth, more or less. A cryosleep chamber could be considered medical equipment. 

Her eyes went wide. "Ooh, I don't think we've ever had a doctor on board before. We don't even have one on the crew. Cap'n and Zoe do most of the doctorin'. They had to do field first aid in the war." She winked at him. "Maybe we'll have to take advantage of your services while you're on board. You are comin' with us, right?" 

"What kind of crew do you have?" 

She frowned, like she was mentally working through the roster. "Well, let's see, there's Captain Reynolds. And Zoe, she's first mate. Wash is our pilot. He's married to Zoe. And then there's Jayne and me." He hesitated to ask what a "Jayne" was. "Oh, and there's Inara, but she's not on the crew. She just rents one of the shuttles and lives there. She's a Companion." She said this last with a trace of awe in her voice, then she narrowed her eyes. "You wouldn't have a problem with that, would you?" 

"No, not at all." While he'd never engaged the services of a Companion himself, he'd had plenty of reason to be grateful for their extensive training in the occasions when he'd been seated next to them at dinner parties. They had an ability to make small talk flow smoothly, a skill he lacked entirely. When talking to a Companion, he almost felt like a good conversationalist, even if he knew that any interest in what he had to say was feigned. 

"Well, that's good, then. Oh, and she don't service the crew or passengers. Just thought you should know." 

"How many passengers are on this run?" 

"So far just one, a Shepherd. And you." She said the last with another one of her bright smiles. She was quite the saleswoman. 

"How much, for me and my cargo to Boros?" It felt strange to ask the question. He'd never had to consider the cost of anything. But now every bit of money he had was currently in his possession, and he wouldn't have a way to get more until he ran across someone so desperate for a doctor that they wouldn't care about references or credentials. She named a price that seemed reasonable enough, if a bit low. He wasn't going to argue with her, though. 

"So, what do you think, Simon? You flyin' with us?" 

He glanced again at the ship. This would be an easier decision to make if he could think straight. Unfortunately, Kaylee's sunny smiles had messed up his thought processes when they melted the ice that had filled his veins ever since he'd first learned that River was in danger. *Problem: Your patient's heart has stopped beating. What do you do?* Except, unlike his imaginary patient, his problem wasn't that his heart wasn't beating, but rather that it was, what felt like clear out of his chest, for the first time in a very long while, and at the worst possible time. What was it he'd sworn so recently? No more personal weaknesses. No fear, no selfish motivations, no major decisions swayed by the presence of a pretty girl whose smiles made him feel warm inside. This was a decision he needed to make with his head, not with his heart -- or any other portion of his anatomy. 

Then again, would Serenity be a bad choice even if he could pretend that Kaylee wasn't standing there in her brightly patterned silk jacket worn over mechanic's coveralls, twirling her umbrella over her shoulder while she smiled at him and held his hand? It was going to the right place. It was leaving soon. With a small crew, they'd be so busy they wouldn't have time to pry into his affairs. If he was right about it being a smuggling ship, they'd be as eager as he was to avoid the authorities. And if there was a chance that the journey wouldn't have to be lonely or unpleasant for him, then that was just a bonus. 

"Yes, I believe I am," he said, freeing his hand from her grasp so he could reach into his pocket for the fare. 

Her smile grew even larger, and she bounced up and down a few times. "Oh, shiny! I'm so glad. We can get to know each other on the way. It'll be fun." He was a little overwhelmed by her enthusiasm and had to wait for her to quit bouncing so he could hand her his money. She didn't even count it before she stuffed the money into her pocket. 

"I'll have to go take care of my cargo," he told her. "I'll be back soon." 

"Don't be late. Captain Reynolds usually likes to get away a bit early. You'd better be on board well before departure time." 

He turned to go, and she waved good-bye to him like they were parting for hours. He waved halfheartedly in response, his head still spinning slightly. Kaylee was certainly a force of nature, and he still wasn't sure if he'd just been conned by a master. As he walked away, he thought he heard a gleeful cry of "Wheeeee!" coming from behind him. 

The same attendant was still sitting at the front desk in the cargo storage warehouse. "You found transport?" he asked as Simon approached. 

"Yes. A ship called Serenity." He gave the docking bay number, then added, "They're leaving at 1500, and I need to be loaded well before then." 

"Don't worry about it. We'll get right on it. I imagine you want your bags." Simon nodded, and the man pried himself out of his chair, got the key ring and went once more to the storage locker. As Simon gathered his belongings, the attendant was already bellowing for someone to take care of moving the crate. With one last glance over his shoulder at the cryosleep chamber, Simon headed back to Serenity. 

When he got there, Kaylee was talking to someone else, apparently another potential passenger. While she smiled and looked enthusiastic, she didn't appear to be flirting. She wasn't touching him or holding his hand. Maybe it hadn't been just sales technique, after all. Simon hovered in the background until they'd completed the transaction. By the time he stepped forward to greet her, a small wheeled vehicle with a trailer behind it had arrived at the docking bay. On the trailer was the cryosleep chamber. 

"This your cargo?" Kaylee asked. 

"Yes. Where should they put it?" 

"We ain't puttin' it nowhere but right here," the man driving the vehicle said. "We don't load ships. Union rules." 

Simon started to protest, but Kaylee stopped him with a hand on his arm. She turned to look over her shoulder at the ship's cargo bay and shouted, "Wash! Got some cargo needs loadin'." Seconds later, another wheeled vehicle with a trailer backed down the cargo ramp and stopped next to the vehicle from the warehouse. A blond man then jumped off and he and the cargo driver transferred the cryosleep chamber to the other trailer. Simon held his breath the whole time. Then the cargo vehicle drove off, and Simon followed his cargo -- his life -- to the ship. 

"Please be careful with that," he called out as Wash drove up the ramp. 

He turned to see three more people arriving at the ship, two men and a women, all of them quite tall. The man in the lead stopped and gave him a long look while the others went on inside. Simon got the distinct impression that he'd been measured and found wanting. Not that he was too concerned about this man's opinion. He looked cold, unfriendly and untrustworthy. His icy stare was the exact opposite of Kaylee's warm friendliness. Simon steeled his own features into a similar icy coolness. 

Kaylee made the formal introductions. "Mal, this is Simon. Simon, this is our captain." 

Oh God, this was the captain? Then it possibly did matter what this man thought of him. Fighting to keep his cool, Simon nodded and said, "Captain Reynolds." 

"Welcome aboard," the captain said, although his eyes said that Simon was anything but welcome. He turned to Kaylee and asked, "This all we got?" 

Kaylee nodded, then turned to give Simon a reassuring smile. Simon didn't feel very reassured. He had a feeling the captain would prefer not to have him on his ship, and he would have been happy to oblige, if he had any choice in the matter. He hefted his bags and went deeper into the cargo bay. Kaylee grabbed her chair and umbrella and slipped into the cargo bay just as the airlock doors slid shut with clang that had a ring of finality. There was no turning back now, and he couldn't help but wonder if he'd made the wrong decision. 

He rested a hand on the cryosleep chamber and thought, _I'm sorry, mei-mei. It was the best I could do._

Then Kaylee came bouncing up to him. "C'mon, I'll show you to your room." She grabbed one of his bags out of his hand before he had a chance to protest. He had no choice but to follow her deeper into the ship. She led him through a doorway, then down a passage, where she stopped and slid a door aside. "Here you go. Nice, ain't it?" 

He went inside and looked around. It wasn't bad, really. And there wasn't a corpse in the bed, which was a marked improvement over his previous accommodations. Kaylee followed him into the room and put down his bag, the turned to give him another one of her smiles. "I'm glad you're flying with us, Simon. I think I knew you would be from the time I saw you. It was meant to be." She started to leave, then paused and said, "Oh, the captain will want everybody up in the dining room in a little bit to go over the rules of the ship. Just look for one of the stairways and go up. Or I could come by and show you the way." 

"I'm sure I can find it. I don't want to keep you from your duties." 

"Okay, then. See you around." With a flutter of her fingers, she was gone. 

And here he was, on a disreputable looking ship with a disreputable looking crew (with the possible exception of one very pretty girl) and a captain who already hated his guts. Meant to be? Who knew? He'd never been particularly religious. Not that he didn't believe, just that he'd never put much thought into it. The idea that someone might have been directing his life to put him in this place at this time was, quite frankly, terrifying. This wasn't where he wanted to be. But it was where he had to be, and so far, everything had gone as well as he could have hoped to get him to this point in his journey. Now, if only whoever was guiding his actions could just get him to where he was supposed to end up, he might even survive. 

The End 

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